


Free

by fangirl_outlet



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star wars TROS - Fandom
Genre: Ben Solo Lives, Ben solo gets everything, F/M, Fix It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redeemed Ben Solo, Reylo - Freeform, Skywalker Family Drama, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, TROS-compliant, World Between Worlds, Young Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21880180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirl_outlet/pseuds/fangirl_outlet
Summary: SPOILERS FOR TROS -- fair warning“With the blood of a scoundrel and princess in his veins, his defiance will shake the stars.”What could happen in what we didn't see onscreen in TROS. ** Now updated with more scenes after researching the WBW theories that are circuling around.**Ben Solo deserved so much more. I tried to fill in the gaps of what we could have had when our boy was off-screen.Picks up at the end of TROS. Ben Solo's journey doesn't end in that cavern. He always just needed to come home.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 17
Kudos: 140
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	1. Chapter 1

Ben Solo was tired. His shoulders, his sides, his stomach were throbbing. The toes on his right leg were pointing in the direction that did not bode well. And he had a splinter – somehow in a cave of space stone – in his pinky.

Bitterness quivered in his bones, and he ground his teeth together. That was not how this ended. No. Not after he hijacked a tie-fighter. Piloted that tiny ass space ball _at lightspeed_ through a literal galactic minefield. Got into a fight – and won-- with his former best assassin-friends. All to once again be thrown into a pit.

But his soul hurt the worst.

For the past two years, there had been a sort of tether, a spring, an energy bounding up against his mind, existing constantly around the periphery of his consciousness. But that was gone now.

So he heaved himself up to find his girl…crumpled on the ground at the base of the throne.

Being flung into a pit should have been hell. Climbing up its jagged edges should have been hell. Dragging himself across the cold, cracked cavern floor should have been hell.

But finally reaching her. Rey. Searching for a pulse. Finding none. Scanning for a glint of light in her eyes. Finding emptiness.

That was hell itself.

“Rey, please,” His voice was cracked. “Please not you. I’m so sorry Rey. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“Dad…”

“Mom…”

“Luke…anybody, please!” he whispered. “Please help me. Please. Please.”

Ben held her, gently cradling her head in his hands. The faintest whiff of sea salt still clung to her to skin as he folded himself around her small frame. His tears were falling fast and heavy down his face, sliding down her bare shoulder. He held her as close as he did in the dark corner of his command shuttle when she was just a scavenger he found in the forest.

His fingers dug into her sides as if he could press the life back into her with the sheer force of…

“I know what I have to do.”

He lowered her down, smoothing away the hairs from her face. One hand cupped the nape of her neck, the other smoothed over her entire stomach. He steadied himself and closed his eyes.

_Somewhere in the galaxy, a supernova was exploding._ He breathed. _Somewhere a root was sprouting from soft soil. Somewhere waves lapped against the shore._

_Rey. Running desperate through the trees. Rey. Sitting cold in her hut on Ach-To. Rey. Standing much too close in a poorly lit elevator._

_Rey. Her battered face lit with the glow of her lightsaber. Trusting him. The tiniest smile dusting across her lips._

_Rey smiling. Rey piloting the falcon. Rey scaling up the side of a long-forgotten cruiser._

Ben breathed.

And slowly, with each image of Rey from a life he knew and a life he only saw in his dreams, he began to feel a change stirring in the force around him. The atmosphere, just moments ago, ladened with hatred and thick with fear dissipated. The cold stopped biting against his cheeks. The rumbles from the sky above faded into silence.

And beneath his fingertips, Ben felt the force begin to flow in her veins. Her muscles began to loosen and the color slowly started returning to her cheeks. Her skin began to warm, even as his cooled with each passing moment.

Rey jolted back to life, eyes darting around only for a moment before locking on to his. He loosened his grip – giving her room to adjust, to breathe and, well, to be alive.

“Ben?”

He smiled, not fully comprehending the relief flooding his system as he watched her beam up at him. Ben, she called him. Ben.

“You’re back,” he heard himself say. “It worked.”

Rey launched herself at him – finally, finally, catching his lips with her own. She clung to him, tracing his jawline with her left thumb, while her right hand wound its way into his wild, unkempt hair.

Ben could barely contain himself as he chased after her kiss, winding his arms even tighter around her.

It was heaven. Holding her this close, feeling her heartbeat – solid and clear – against his chest. Feeling the stretch of muscles in his face he hadn’t used in decades as he grinned like an absolute idiot.

“You should have done that much sooner,” he chuckled. “Cause, you know, you’re not bad for a scavenger.”

“That is _entirely_ on you Ben,” Rey tried to match his cockiness, but was lost in tracing the lips she’d never thought would do more than smirk at her.

“You missed out.”

“But we’ll have time.”

“Sure, sweetheart.”

But his eyes were dropping and his limbs went cold and he felt the darkness close in around him. As he hit the ground the last thing he saw was his teary-eyed girl reach for him.

_If this is it, I’ll be okay with it._

_I love you. Rey._

And the last Skywalker, Ben Organa Solo, faded in her arms.


	2. Chapter 2

_Get up Ben…_   
_Open your eyes Ben…_   
_Be brave Ben…_

_You’re not alone…_

_Be with me…_

He wasn’t entirely sure what he expected, but opening his eyes wasn’t on the list. Neither was seeing an endless vast of stars. Or feeling lighter and more ache-free than, well, probably his entire existence.  
  
He should have probably just enjoyed the peace, but he couldn’t help turning himself around, racking his brain for any useful information stored away from years of poring over Jedi lore. He itched for the feeling of a heavy, leather-bound book in his hand, a wet quill in the other.

It was mostly dark. No, not dark. It was the kind of absolute blackness that felt your could lose your very self if you wandered too far. It was bottomless. It was flat. That it was everything and nothing. It was a vacuum.

But it was also light. Streaks of stars, if that’s what they were, streaked across the darkness. They almost danced across its surface. Crossing themselves, making arches and patterns and pathways. 

He had seen something like this before…in a book…in a dream…

The Force was overwhelming here. Ben felt it weighing on him from every direction. It was as if he found himself caught at the vergence of the galaxy itself. 

Miraculously, a morai glided by him, flapping its wings gracefully. It perched itself on a strand of stars, tilting its head as it considered him.  
  
“Where am I? Why did the Force send me here?” he mused. “It has to be some sort of purgatory plane…or…”  
  
The whispers flooded in. They were only snippets of words, barely phrases. Voices jumbled together as if a thousand generations of a thousand lives in a thousand places were trying to reach him.

He winced, eyes still wide open around him. He wound his hands through his ragged hair, covering his ears, tinged with cold. It was dizzying — the voices, the Force.

But then…

“My boy.”  
  
“Mom?”  
  
There, across from him, for the first time in too many years was Leia. And it wasn’t the face he recognized from the holos his spies sent him of a general whose well-worn worry lines were etched deep into her face. Her grey hair pinned up in traditional Alderaanian mourning wreaths.   
  
No, this was his mother. With her long brown hair hanging behind her and her soft white dress with billowing sleeves outstretched for him to curl into.

And it was quiet. And calm. And the world around him felt solid.  
  
Ben fell to his knees and buried his head in his mother’s arms. Her scent of pine and apples enveloped him as he shook with sobs — buried too deep within for too long — that were now burrowing out of him.  
  
“I’m so sorry. For everything.”  
  
“Shush, baby,” she smoothed his hair down and kissed the crown of his head. “I know. I know.”  
  
She lifted his chin, smiling at how much her son had grown but how his soft eyes never changed, and placed another kiss on his forehead.  
  
“It’s about time we had a chat Ben.”  
  
“So do you know where we are?”  
  
Ben was clinging to his mother’s hand as she guided him further into the stars.  
  
They began to cement into a solid path, pointing straight ahead towards several patches of light. As they drew closer, Ben let his eyes fall away from his mother and saw his life unfold before his eyes.  
  
“Do I look like your uncle?” Leia scoffed lightly. “Or one of the books you lined the walls with?”  
  
In the first patch he saw, Ben watched himself – age seven – hastily grab one of those books and hide it under his pillow. Leia and Han tucked him in – each pressing a brief kiss to his head before darting out in their evening wear. He pouted for a moment, before pulling the book out, and levitating a glowing orb as he poured over the pages.  
  
To his right, he watched five-year-old Ben be tossed around by Chewie as his Uncle Lando laughed with his parents over their drinks.

Further down the path, he saw himself run to the window as he watched Han leave in the Millennium falcon. Leia busying herself with a protocol droid in her Senate robes, rehearsing her speech for the evening.   
  
Another one – not too many years ago – stabbing his father.   
  
His failure to stop the missiles that blew his mother into the vacuum of space.  
  
His last duel with Luke.  
  
His days with friends at the temple. His angry outbursts in against his nanny-droid. His first adventure as a padawan. His fight with his classmates. His first time in the Falcon’s pilot seat. His first day with Snoke. His first time fighting alongside Luke. His training in the darkness.  
  
His first time meeting Rey.  
  
His uncle standing above him with a lit saber.

His hesitation in his ship, fleeing the wreckage of the temple. When he chose to run to Snoke…instead of going home.  
  
Ben paused.  
  
 _Ben, age 23, was curled in on himself in the corner of a shuddering spacecraft like he was still five years old. San Lor Tekka and Luke were frantically scrambling the controls at the counsel, struggling to keep from falling to pieces as they hurtled through space. Ben was shivering -- beads of cold sweat lining his forehead._  
  
 _Ben tasted metal in his mouth as he tried to keep his thundering feelings constrained in his chest and not reverberating against the walls of the ship. He kept hearing “Senator Organa, daughter of Darth Vader” running on a loop in his head. He felt the hatred, the cold, thick, stinging, frustration snaking its way through his veins, his chest truly for the first time – aimed at his mother, his uncle, the galaxy…himself._

_He heard a voice — always the voices — but this was new. Instead of the sharp, raspy, snide, slithery voice that usually came — this was deep, solid, mechanical. It called to him. Reminded him of their bond, their connection, his legacy, his blood, his power, his rage, his purpose, his loss._

_The ship gave another perilous shudder_.   
  
“Ben you need to know,” Leia started. “There was so much more than that to your grandfather.”  
  
“I was a desperate, paranoid, jealous man, Ben.”  
  
Leia and Ben weren’t alone anymore. Their family, his family, had joined them in this limbo space.  
  
Han was next to him, now, ruffling his hair.  
  
Tinted in a blue hue, Anakin and Luke, with their dusty blond hair and long flowing Jedi robes, stood solemnly beside his mother. Their faces were brighter, younger – not marred by years of regret.  
  
“And, yes, Palpatine knew that,” his grandfather continued. “But I was already there. I was losing myself in the dark before I made myself his.”  
  
Anakin raised his head. “But you Ben. You fought. You loved. You did it.”

Ben wasn’t really sure what to do with that. His arms hung awkwardly at his sides, once again feeling too long for his body. He couldn’t meet his grandfathers eyes for more than a moment. 

“It was never you,” he finally said. “The Emperor, he told me that it was never you that came to me after everything.” 

Anakin shook his head. 

“I couldn’t,” Anakin started. “At first I couldn’t risk you finding out who I was. Then it was too late. I couldn’t reach Kylo — Sidious. He was there. Somehow. Blocking me.” 

Ben stared at his grandfather’s young face. He wondered if he looked that young when friends chased him through the stars and he ran away from home and he wound up on Snoke’s planet preparing for the Knights. 

“We were the same age when it happened,” Ben said. “When I heard you— Vader, Sidious — the first time.” 

“But you still fought Ben. And I’m proud of you.”  
  
Tucked into Anakin’s side was his grandmother – a fact Ben felt deep in his bones – finding recognition in her dark hair, dark features, and round brown eyes.

He remembered her. A dream…that came to him at night when the shadows woke him up. But the droids were on low power mode. And Han was among the stars. And Leia was refusing to yield the floor. 

But this woman, with her flowing navy robes and soft curly hair painted with flowers and her soft scent of lavender, she was there. She brushed his hair at night and held him as he cried. She hummed to him until he fell back asleep. But she was always gone in the morning. 

She walked up to Ben, holding his face in both hands. He bowed down to her, holding her arms tightly, as she pressed their foreheads together.   
  
“My, how you’ve grown,” Padme said, reaching for his face and touching her forehead to his. “You did well, my sweet prince.”


	3. Chapter 3

There was one more thing Ben needed to see. Leia turned him gently towards the soft light.   
  
_Han stood over an exhausted Leia, grinning bigger than the time Ben saw him actually race – and win­ – in the Falcon. The light was soft on her face and the sound of rolling waves danced through the open window. They were both smiling down on a tiny bundle in Leia’s arms._  
  
 _“Hey there, kid,” his father said._  
  
 _“Ben,” his mother smiled._  
  
 _Baby Ben gurgled up at his parents, blinking slowly. A darkness crossed his tiny features for a moment, as he thrashed in Leia’s arms and cried into the early morning quiet. But Han and Leia were there, shushing their baby and holding him close._

Ben felt his mother rubbing small circles between his shoulders.   
  
“We should have done more for you Ben,” Leia said. “I’m sorry.”  
  
His uncle approached. It was the first time in who knows how long Ben didn’t flinch being this close to Luke.

“We had all barely escaped our own darkness,” Luke offered. “Accepting it passed to you? Having to admit that our greatest fear, the curse of our family had come for you the brightest hope of us all...It was a reality we never believed could actually happen.”  
  
“And when it did, we missed it. I—I missed it,” he hung his head. “We failed you Ben.”  
  
Ben didn’t understand how this reality – if that’s what you could call it – worked, but evidently he could cry.

The glint of green, distorted features that loomed over him in the night all those years ago weren’t hiding in the shadows of Luke’s wrinkles anymore. Instead Ben saw his Uncle — the mighty Skywalker who helped Ben make his first light saber and chuckled the first time Ben used it to beat him in a duel.   
  
“I found my way back,” Ben said slowly, still holding his mother’s hand and looking around at his family.  
  
“Rey, are you sure you have to leave?”  
  
The Skywalker-Solos had a dysfunctional family tree, but Ben was pretty sure that FN 2817 was not a member of his force family.  
  
He let go of Leia’s hand and turned to see Rey through the stars, packing her bags into the Falcon. Time -- as it must operate in near-suspension if at all here, Ben noted – had clearly passed for her. The gash on her head had completely healed and her color had darkened in the sun. He watched as she loaded the last of her things, double-checking a small satchel twice over, before turning to her friend with her shoulders set.  
  
“Yes, Finn,” her voice was crystal clear to Ben. “You know as well as I do that I can’t resist this. I need…I need to just finish this. I owe it to all of them.”  
  
“So this is it then?” Ben suddenly felt the hollowness he spent his whole life cocooned in crack open in his gut.  
  
He didn’t regret his choice. Never. Not when she was clearly alive, and healthy and seemingly at peace, but he’d be lying if the realization of watching her and never being able to really be with her didn’t make him miss being thrown into the abyss. It was hell — but it was near her.  
  
“It doesn’t have to be,” Leia said.  
  
Ben turned, eyebrows knit together.  
  
“I don’t understand...”  
  
Leia smiled, and patted his face.  
  
“Ben, you have a choice to make,” she said. “You can come with me now, come home with all of us. Or, let me help you and we’ll send you back to her.”  
  
Ben still didn’t understand. What he knew now, looking up, was his family was surrounded by the light of the stars, shrouded by some sort of veil. Only his mother remained next to him. Waiting patiently.

And that’s when it clicked. 

He was in the world between worlds. A gateway, a station — linking all of time and space at one single convergence. Ben looked around him and the darkness lifted slightly. Faint outlines of far away worlds twinkled in the darkness. 

He read about this once. He was 15 years old and he snuck into Luke’s room after getting into a fight with one of his fellow students — one he wasn’t allowed to win. He remembered rifling through one of Luke’s old trunks, looking for the old compass they used with San Lor Tekka, but instead pulling out a bunch of old leather texts. He could still feel the weathered parchment under his hands, tracing the old notes scribbled a thousand generations ago. 

That’s when he found himself pouring over the notes about the a vergeance scatter, an axis in the Force, a mystical junk drawer of sorts. He remembered adding his own thoughts — next to the sketch of thousand worlds — amongst the ancient ones. 

Ben looked back at the path he walked with his mother. There the darkness turned menacing, threatening to surge back and consume them all. A looming obsidian mass stood, lit only by the chaotic flashes of blue lighting. His leg ached, his spine seared with a white hot burn, his vision started to cloud just looking at it.

But straight ahead was a single, small speck of land, bathed in light. 

“I see it. I see the island…”  
  
His family was right there. He could come home. Finally.  
  
But then there was Rey.  
  
She was hurtling through lightspeed now, her eyes set on the coordinates. The orange droid that led him straight to her was beeping happily in the background.  
  
The more he watched, the more solid he felt — as if he could almost reach out through the cosmos itself and brush her hair back from her face, soothing her furrowed brow.   
  
“I need to get back to her, Mom,” Ben said, unable to tear his eyes away from Rey. “Will you help me?”  
  
Leia kissed his cheek, and Ben felt the entire reality around him shift. The scent of pine and apple enveloped him again as he felt Leia’s life force pass through him, giving him a center of gravity once more.

But rather than walk back to the dark or straight towards the light, his mother showed him a third destination. Far off in the distance, one of the farthest glittering planets. 

“Goodbye baby.”   
  
Ben’s feet moved of their own accord, guided by the force on an unseen path.

As he traveled away from his family he heard voices fading behind him.  
  
“What a surprise,” Han chuckled. “Choosing the girl over a bunch of dead folks in a mumbo jumbo place that makes no sense.”  
  
“Well you can’t deny the truth about this family,” Padmé said, nudging Anakin. “Damn the whole galaxy if we’re in love.”


	4. Chapter 4

  
Tatooine looked a lot like Jakku.  
  
Rey supposed it should have made her sad. Here she was, at a lonely, sandy, deserted place that could have easily been where her entire life went wrong.  
  
But instead, she imagined Luke, a lot younger and a lot less cranky, running along the sand dunes. She wondered if he ever stared up at the sky to watch the starships go by at night.  
  
BB-8 let out a long whistle as their destination came into site. They recovered the coordinates from R2’s data memory before they left the base, but Rey could feel it in her bones that this was the place. A spec of white nearly lost amongst the sea of beige sand, but it glowed brightly in the force.  
  
Pain. Suffering. Lost. Love. Home. It was all there.  
  
“Yeah BB-8, I’m sure that’s it,” Rey assured the tittering little droid. “I told you, I don’t know why I felt it had to be here. It was – just a feeling.”  
  
Rey landed the Falcon not too far from the hut, but she took her time slowly crossing through the soft sand. Taking in the waves of the force radiating from the memories on this very spot. They weren’t hers. They weren’t even her blood’s. But, somehow, she felt as if the clay walls were inviting her in, claiming her as one of their own.  
  
She didn’t come with a plan.  
  
It was just a feeling that came to her that came all too often after…everything.  
  
It wasn’t easy getting used to the silence in the other end of her bond – the rings around her eyes were evidence enough of that for even a non-Force sensitive like Poe. But it helped to throw herself into other things. Keeping busy.  
  
Finn finally revealed his secret – the Force was with him too and he needed a teacher. So she started what she could there – and it helped for a few months.  
  
But the dreams kept coming.  
  
So she, and Finn, struck out with her pile of old jedi books to a planet on the edges of the galaxy to find their crystals. And they tinkered and tinkered and finally made two decent blades. Rey even pushed herself to repurpose her old staff into her new double-sided blade – and that helped. For a few more months.  
  
Nearly a year had gone by from that last battle on Exogal, but Rey felt like her life was moving in slow motion.  
  
What was the purpose of the Jedi at this point? Just her and Finn sparring with each other?  
  
Rey was tired. Tired of waking up every day still exhausted from the day before. Tired of treading water while the rest of her friends began their new lives. But most of all, she was tired of waking up in an empty bed with an ache deep in her chest and wondering why she never saw another force ghost -- or at least one in particular -- after...everything.   
  
Looking down at Luke and Leia’s sabers one day – a legacy she needed to honor – Rey finally felt a nudge in the force, a spark, something to drive her to whatever came now.   
  
That was how Rey found herself traveling out to Tatooine, tasking Finn with finding Poe and scouting out a place for a temple or camp or whatever they were going to call it.  
  
But now the restlessness was gone.  
  
Rey snatched a loose speeder bumper and slid down into Luke’s childhood home. She wandered around, tracing the walls, peering into rooms, almost hearing the whispers of times long past. Drawn towards the kitchen, her vision blurred – She saw a tall sandy blonde boy distraught at the table next to a woman with Leia’s elaborate dark hair. Then she saw Luke, sitting at the same table, frustrated with his uncle that he’d stuck here another cycle.  
  
On a whim, Rey brought out the two sabers that never left her side. Finding a soft cloth, she carefully wrapped them up and trudged up the hill again.  
  
It was an odd feeling, saying goodbye to Luke and Leia’s final gifts to her, choosing to bury them deep in the sand.  
  
“Leia this was never your home, but it’s where everything began for you all really,” Rey said, praying it somehow reached her wherever she was. “I just hope you’re all together now…say hi to Ben for me?”  
  
“You there!”  
  
Rey turned around to see a tiny old lady peering up at her.  
  
“No one has been on this farm in ages. Who are you?”  
  
“I’m Rey.”  
  
“Rey who?”  
  
The scavenger-turned Jedi paused. Wasn’t that the question that kept her tongue-tied around her friends? Why they still didn’t know exactly why the Emperor wanted her to make his final stand?  
  
Then she felt a shiver in the force and saw, watching over her, the two that changed her life so much – Luke and Leia. Who knew who she was and loved her anyway. Who, in a sense, brought her to herself, to the force, to…Ben, even if for the briefest of moments.  
  
They were waiting. 

“I’m Rey Skywalker.”  
  
The lady simply shrugged and turned away. Skywalkers were long gone from here, she knew.  
  
As she watched the two binary suns setting in the distance, Rey felt a surge around her in the force – like a warm wind picking up in the desert evening. So she let herself indulge in simply just being – feeling – wishing somewhere in the thousand generations somehow now within her he’d feel her, come to her like Luke and Leia. She’d let herself have this moment, brief as it was, and then she’d move on. Forge a new order. Anything. She’d keep them all alive.  
  
“Skywalker huh? You really are a scavenger.”  
  
“Ben?”  
  
There he was – still in the same loose-fitting black shirt she singed a hole through with his own saber a year ago. Same dark mass of wild, unkept, sweptback waves. Same damn eyes. And a unabashed grin that lit his whole face.  
  
Her feet felt like they were sinking in the sand, but he had no problem practically sprinting across the dunes to her.  
  
Ben swept her up into his arms, lifting her to him, desperately consuming her like she was the very air he needed.  
  
That was when their bond flared back to life – crackling and sparking in the force, like ten thousand supernovas had combusted everywhere and all at once.  
  
She moved on instinct – locking her legs around him and launching to get more of his mouth, of him. Ben followed her lead, his soft lips becoming more ravenous with every moment. Her tounge passed over his lips just once before he opened for her, drinking her in like he never had water in his life. 

Ben clung to her tightly, as she slid her hands through his hair, over his shoulders, down his back – touching every inch of him she could reach to make sure he was solid and there beneath her.  
  
Both were gasping when they finally broke apart an eternity later. And Ben laughed lightly, nudging his nose against hers. He still smelled like the embers and ash from the cavern but he was there with her.  
  
“I told you we should be doing this more often,” he smirked, as he pulled her down for another hungry kiss.  
  
Rey braced herself against his forehead, hands still ghosting over his lips, jaw, neck.  
  
“You’re here. You’re real.”  
  
Ben let her slide down, but her toes barely touched the ground. He kept her pinned close to his chest, brushing the hair away from her face. His eyes glided over her, soaking in every detail.   
  
She was just as beautiful as the first day he saw her. Running wild in the forest, shooting blindly. Glaring defiantly down at him, a monster in a mask.  
  
“How long have I been away? You look…tanner.”  
  
“Tanner?” Rey’s nose scrunched up as she force-pushed him away from her.  
  
_Someone kept up their training_ , Ben thought.  
  
“You’ve been gone an entire year Ben Solo!” she shouted, tears welling up in her eyes and thickening her voice. “That’s what you start with? How could you just leave like that? Where the hell have you been this whole time? Why didn’t you show up anywhere? I thought you were dead Ben.”  
  
Rey swung wildly at him threw her tears, but Ben caught her wrists easily and pressed a light kiss to her forehead.  
  
“I was. I think. It’s hard to explain,” he said quietly. “But I came back sweetheart.”  
  
“How?”  
  
Ben shrugged – still not entirely sure himself. But he led her to the knot in the force he felt, a kind of anchor that guided him even when he was still numb to her presence.  
  
Holding his hand out, the cloth parcel Rey had buried only moments before flew out of the sand. Ben unwrapped his family’s sabers.  
  
“Mom says hi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it wouldn't be Rey and Ben if there wasn't the softest of fights even amongst all the fluff. 
> 
> Thanks friends XX

**Author's Note:**

> This was very cathartic to write. I couldn't stop thinking about how there was a lot we didn't see and a lot that wasn't explained. I'm trying to remain hopeful and I think -- as tragic as it was to have barely any Ben at the end -- the silver lining is that we can craft our own story and it still work in the framework. 
> 
> Please share your thoughts in the comments, I need to get this out with my fellow reylos. Thank you for making such a great community for the past two years.


End file.
